50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies

July 18, 2008

You’ve started a company blog. What comes next? It’s not like someone gives you blog topics and an editorial calendar and suggests which one to post first. Well, I’m here to help. As part of my ongoing desire to see you pick up these social media tools for yourself and change the future of your business, here are 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies. (Feel free to repost, but please link back to [chrisbrogan.com] ). Oh, and if some of these don’t fit exactly, think creatively about whether you could adapt them.

50 Blog Topics for Marketers

How to get the most from our customer service department.
The best way to recommend an improvement to our product or service.
Podcast - complete installation instructions in audio and video.
What would you like to see in next year’s catalog?
Our favorite projects over the coming months.
Some tricks that might keep you from needing support.
Upcoming coupons and offers for the next two weeks.
We want to talk. How should we contact you? Where?
Choose our product’s price.
Five tips for getting more from your ______ .
A little bit about us.
A walk in our neighborhood.
Photos from our community meetup.
What goes into our decision process.
Video - a tour of the plant, and a day in the life of your product.
What it’s like to work for our company.
We support these causes, and here’s why.
The next two years: how we grow with you.
We want to come to work with you (and learn how we can help)!
Giving back to the community: our plan.
What we worry about over the coming year.
How we handle your disputes or complaints.
Can you recommend a better process for this?
Sometimes, we have to say no.
Your call is important to us. We’ll tell you how important.
We’re sorry, and here’s how we’ll handle things next time.
Report from our independent community review board.
How to close out your account with us. (Imagine how risky this is?)
The economy is piling up costs, and we have to share the burden.
Understanding what went wrong.
Birthday announcements for August. (Imagine listing your customers’ names on a birthday calendar?)
Fourteen ways to customize your _______.
Why we like our competitor’s product better, and how we’ll catch up.
Customer Profile - Sedah D’Abdul.
Our fourth annual YOU awards.
What we think is unique about us. Do you agree?
Communities in your neighborhood, and several on the Web.
Your blog posts: Javier Mendoza suggests ways we could improve.
Companies to consider when you get too big for us.
Why we believe participation pays off.
Meet our four favorite customer service reps for September.
Vendors that serve us so we can help you.
Our global plan - Vietnam, Italy, and your back yard.
What we look for in our leadership.
Video - our new smaller offices downtown.
Green is our new favorite color- save energy and money with your ______.
How corporate responsibility saved us $3Mil last year.
Growing up but staying fun.
Your event, our treat.
Five promises we’ve kept over the last few years.

You tell me: where there some squirmy parts in there? Can you see how customers might react to reading these? I wrote almost every one of these with the customer as a reader. How would these shift if your reader was someone else in your list of stakeholders?

What would you add?

—-

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.

All photos are the property of other creators, and licensed under Creative Commons. Click any photo to see the credited photographer of each.

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Comments

Comment by Ken Burgin on July 18, 2008 @ 3:58 am

Nice list - gave me immediate inspiration for an article. Many thanks…

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[…] include the latest, where Chris puts down 50 topics marketers could blog about. Designed for companies I think this list is gold for self-employed as well. There are some truly […]

Comment by Free List of 195 Keyword Suggestions on July 18, 2008 @ 5:17 am

What a great list. I love lists!!

Thanks Chris,
JR

Comment by Mark Tosczak on July 18, 2008 @ 5:45 am

Great idea to suggest these posts — a blog is nothing without content. How about these?

– How to use our affiliate program
– We’re having a contest! please create an online video ad
– Friend us at Facebook (or Myspace, etc.)
– Please suggest worthy nonprofit organizations for our corporate philanthropy program
– Please join our low-frequency email list for special offers
– Here’s an issue affecting our industry, and here’s how you can get involved
– Monthly employee profile

Comment by Alina Popescu on July 18, 2008 @ 5:58 am

This is indeed a great list, Chris. I’ve used some of these topics in the past for either company blog posts or articles that I wrote for magazines who promoted us. The tech support topic I chose was one of the most popular :)

Comment by Michael Vorel on July 18, 2008 @ 8:28 am

Brilliant List Chris! Thank you for creating it and can’t wait to create some new blog posts on a variety of topics. I was thinking of making it a circle, similar to a dart board and spinning it for a random suggestion of the day. The number of the day would than suggest what you have to write about. Cheers

Comment by tinku gallery on July 18, 2008 @ 9:33 am

Hi Chris,

Great list, I got a few ideas I had not thought of, like a walk in our neighbourhood — in my case it’s a great way to create community within the neighbourhood and create goodwill for other retailers on my street that I could feature.

To add to the list, I’d say anything that makes the company have more of an identity would be good — for example, a consumer products company could feature a video interview with their head designer, or in the case of FreshBooks (www.freshbooks.com) they had a video showing what it was like to work in the office, which they use on their Careers page.

I also like seeing posts where the company profiles other companies or business/community leaders that they admire and why.

–Amrita

Comment by rsomers on July 18, 2008 @ 9:36 am

Fantastic topics - I’m going to use this as a source when I’m stuck for topics to tackle.

The ones I love (and that would make management squirm) are the ones where transparency would impact customer behavior. A forward-looking promotional roadmap, for example - when I was at Dell we knew customers were trained to anticipate our weekly promo changes, but the idea of telegraphing upcoming promos via blog would have been verboten in those days.

We all put some effort into image management in both personal and work lives. That typically takes the form of selective disclosure (a puff piece on our ‘green’ corporate initiatives would qualify). But true transparency starts to happen in two-way communication - where we start a conversation about how green _you_ think we are

Comment by Rebecca on July 18, 2008 @ 9:40 am

Gyzorked!

Comment by Steve Woodruff on July 18, 2008 @ 9:42 am

Fabulous list - very helpful. I’ll probably use at least one of these on my pharma blog this week.

Here’s another: Why did we start this company, anyway?

Comment by David Hobson on July 18, 2008 @ 9:47 am

Thanks for a great list. Im sure many bloggers will get some ideas from this.

Comment by chrisbrogan on July 18, 2008 @ 9:56 am

@ken - happy to help

@mark - some really great ones there! Good job, and thank you.

@michael - if you make a dartboard - share the graphic?

@rsomers - That was really the guts of my intent. : ) A share of squiriming was the goal.

@tinku gallery - I’m glad you found ways to make it work for you. I like when people can transfer the ideas easily.

@steve - that’s certainly a great one!

Comment by Rick Grant on July 18, 2008 @ 9:56 am

Good work.

I see a number of these I need to get written right away. Thanks for the direction.

Love this list building you do. I remember listening to Earl Nightingale talk about how important this was over 20 years ago. You’ve got it down. Keep it up.

Rick.

Comment by Jeff at Upromise on July 18, 2008 @ 10:00 am

Great post. I’m planning to write a company blog so this is great food for thought.

Thanks,
Jeff

Comment by Phil Swinney on July 18, 2008 @ 10:01 am

I love number 35! Great list to use when selling the concept.

Comment by marnix on July 18, 2008 @ 10:01 am

added to your great content are these amazing pictures

can you comment on how you find and select

Comment by Beth Jones on July 18, 2008 @ 10:23 am

Extremely helpful - i will probably work through these topics one by one - thanks Chris.

Comment by mark_hayward on July 18, 2008 @ 10:26 am

Hey Chris - Thanks, man!! Even though my wife and I run a [very] small business almost all of your fifty post ideas can be tweaked to fit our situation.

Funny, we were out walking the dogs this morning and saying that we really need to update our business blog…

If you and the family ever make it down to Culebra you just earned yourself a free nights stay with us!

Have a great weekend!
MH

Comment by Patrick Johnson on July 18, 2008 @ 10:28 am

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get management to at least try some of the transparent posts? I have found that some companies love the idea where others simply dismiss it despite the fact that it would help their business.

Any toe-in-the-water situations, etc?

Comment by chrisbrogan on July 18, 2008 @ 10:34 am

@marnix - all the photos I use are courtesy of Flickr and are available under the Creative Commons usage. There are tons of great snaps up there. I love Flickr tooooo much.

Comment by mark_hayward on July 18, 2008 @ 10:43 am

@Patrick Johnson - what is the specific topic you would like to write about?

I have always found if you can find examples and success stories then management will be more willing to go along. Also, I don’t know if this is an option but if you can make seem more like a newsletter piece and less like a blog post it might be less threatening…

Comment by jonmoss on July 18, 2008 @ 10:51 am

love the list! We’re building a multi-author referral blogging site that offers B2B services, and this is just the thing I’ve been looking for to unleash the creative side of the referral partners.

@businesschatt

Comment by Melissa Paulik on July 18, 2008 @ 11:13 am

Chris,

These are great ideas! So many people considering writing a corporate blog tell me they have no idea what to write about. (so they post press releases - argh!) If this doesn’t keep them stocked with great ideas I don’t know what will.

I also recommend adding posts about best practices to your blogging agenda. In my post this morning Corporate Blogging Made Easy I talk about how to get ideas from other bloggers and make it a win/win for everyone. Of course, I use your post as the example.

Melissa Paulik
http://www.themarketingsurvivalist.blogspot.com

Comment by Brandon Chesnutt on July 18, 2008 @ 11:17 am

Chris,

Fantastic list. Companies who blog should definitely take the time to not only inform readers on happenings inside and outside the office, but celebrate them.

Another suggestion: “Why the people in our office love what we do…”

Thanks for the inspiration.

Brandon

Comment by chrisbrogan on July 18, 2008 @ 11:36 am

Best practices are a great idea, Melissa. I should’ve thought of it, especially because it maintains a market leadership perspective.

Brandon, thanks for your idea. Makes me think of the folks at Zappos.

Patrick - it’s a real struggle, especially if a company’s culture is dead set against this. I don’t recommend blogging for every company. One pre-requisite is that the company is ready to have difficult discussions out in the open. If THAT is okay, then toe-dippers have been liberally sprinkled into those posts so that you can start on safe territory, and dip into scary a bit at a time.

Comment by Patrick Johnson on July 18, 2008 @ 11:57 am

@mark_hayward

I can remember a specific example where I was advising a condo development to blog and ask about what they could be to be green (well, more green - they had made strides but ended up semi-green rather than green green). They were afraid it would give them the stigma of not being green. My counter is that it would increase their perception of being green, as those green in the community would talk about their efforts to try and be greener.

They would not do it though…

The newsletter idea sounds good, I wonder how I could have worked that into this situation.

Comment by Patrick Johnson on July 18, 2008 @ 11:59 am

@chrisbrogan - Thanks for the response. Guess in some situations it is just a lost cause then eh? It is frustrating to get companies so far in blogging only to have them shut the door in situations that could benefit them the most.

But there are companies out there that do see the value and are willing to push themselves.

Comment by James on July 18, 2008 @ 12:32 pm

That’s a pretty good list of items. If you guys like learning how social media can be utilized as a powerful marketing strategy then check this site out http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2 … another great topic to write about is a market analysis blogpost. If you are twitter, it’d be interesting to hear your perspective on the micro-blogging market space

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Comment by will on July 18, 2008 @ 1:19 pm

These are great suggestions.

Comment by Anuj Adhiya on July 18, 2008 @ 2:27 pm

One more (hopefully I didnt glaze over this being mentioned above):
“The biggest marketing/business issue we are facing right now. How would you go about this?”

Great list - Thanks
A

Comment by Jacqueline from SEOGroup on July 18, 2008 @ 3:26 pm

This is an awesome inspirational list, and a great starting point for most any company that is planning on making blogging part of their culture (I do agree with you in that blogging is an ideal business move for every company).

Comment by Simon K on July 18, 2008 @ 3:48 pm

A fantastic starting point.

The only one I take issue with is no.39 - I can see what you are aiming for but to me it sounds out a lack of ambition.

For me, no. 11 is crucial. Blogs are about humanizing the company; revealing details about the workforce that clients or customers can bond over.

Great work Chris - please keep it up!
Simon

Comment by Anthony Russo on July 18, 2008 @ 5:53 pm

Good post Chris. I forward this to our CEO to help with his blog ideas.

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Comment by Dave Fleet on July 20, 2008 @ 10:59 pm

Two thumbs up. Great stuff, Chris. Great to see you had a good PCB3 this weekend, too. Sorry I couldn’t be there.

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Comment by Oye Felix on July 21, 2008 @ 5:02 pm

Dear Chris,
Your list has turbo charged my inner mind with interesting ideas on lots of Blog topics.
Keep up the great work.
Consider this topic as well : We are up and running because you are still with us.

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Comment by Lisa McGrath on July 24, 2008 @ 3:49 pm

Great list, Chris! Other ideas I have include:

- Product roadmaps (for B2B)
- Industry issue/event commentary
- This day in our co. history
- Customer success stories

Thanks for the inspiration!

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Comment by Corey Freeman on July 28, 2008 @ 5:43 pm

Nicely compiled list. I think that this is a great idea for any company. I know that I have a client who I’m going to be doing long-term marketing for, and so this is an awesome way to get ideas.

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Comment by Priyanka on July 29, 2008 @ 1:26 am

Hi Chris,
I find the ideas a bit too company oriented. How about topics that are well not mainly on the companies products/policies but more general.
However I definitely have gotten ideas for a few new posts from here.

~Priyanka
http://www.mahindrauniverse.com

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I was having a creative issue and just googled blog topic not expecting to find anything. But this post came up. What a GREAT list. THANK YOU

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Comment by James Lewis on September 30, 2008 @ 8:58 am

This is a great starting point for me setting up my first company blog and i love the suggestions from other readers… by my calculations my list here is up to 64 ideas and counting. Thanks a million.

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[…] 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write and Talk About You’ve started a company blog and/or podcast. What comes next? It’s not like someone gives you blog topics and an editorial calendar and suggests which one to post first. Well, I’m here to help. As part of my ongoing desire to change the future of your business, here are 50 bBlog topics marketers could write and talk about for their companies. 1. The best way to recommend an improvement to our product or service 2. How to get the most from our customer service department 3. Complete installation instructions 4. What would you like to see in next year’s catalogue? 5. Our favourite projects over the coming months 6. Some tricks that might keep you from needing support 7. Upcoming special offers for the next month 8. We want to talk. How should we contact you? Where? 9. Five tips for getting more from your ______ 10. A walk in our neighbourhood 11. Photos from our community meetup 12. What goes into our decision process 13. A tour of the plant, and a day in the life of your product 14. What it’s like to work for our company 15. We support these causes, and here’s why 16. Have you met our president ? 17. The next two years: how we grow with you 18. We want to come to work with you (and learn how we can help)! 19. Giving back to the community: our plan 20. What we worry about over the coming year 21. How we handle your disputes or complaints 22. Can you recommend a better process for ____? 23. Befriend us at Facebook 24. Please suggest a worthy non-profit organization 25. We’re sorry, and here’s how we’ll handle things next time 26. Please join our low-frequency email list for special offers 27. How is the economy affecting us, and may be you 28. Understanding what went wrong 29. Birthday announcements for August (employees and clients) 30. Fourteen ways to customize your _______. 31. Here’s an issue affecting our industry, and here’s how you can get involved 32. Customer Profile – Mr. X 33. Our fourth annual YOU awards 34. What we think is unique about us. Do you agree? 35. Communities in your neighbourhood, and several on the Web 36. Your blog posts: Mr. Y suggests ways we could improve ____ 37. Other sources of relevant information in our industry 38. Meet our favourite customer service reps for September 39. A survey… to better serve you 40. Vendors that serve us so we can help you 41. You often talk to our receptionist – get to know her better 42. Five promises we’ve kept over the last few years 43. The meaning of our slogan 44. Take a look at our new office in Toronto 45. Green is our new favourite colour- save energy and money with your ______. 46. How corporate responsibility paid off for us 47. Growing up but staying fun 48. Your event, our treat 49. This new service is a money saver 50. Where do we want to be in five years Source: most of these subjects are from this Chris Brogan’s post http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-blog-topics-marketers-could-write-for-their-companies/ […]